Raoul Whitfield (1896–1945)

Raoul Whitfield was a contemporary of Dashiell Hammett (and seems to have been well liked by Black Mask editor Joseph Shaw), but it's best to approach his work with modest expectations. The two men were on different planets as far as the quality of their work is concerned: Hammett was a literary genius; Whitfield was a pulp magazine writer. While it would be unfair to call him a hack, it's obvious why his three novels are not highly regarded today. As long as you're aware of his limitations, however, these stories about stoic, prematurely gray Filipino detective Jo Gar (which Whitfield wrote under the pseudonym "Ramon Decolta") are fun. Not every one of them works, and the author's inclination toward flat, dull prose can sometimes be a real hindrance, but at his best Whitfield was actually pretty entertaining. My favorites are "Signals of Storm," in which Gar works a kidnapping case as a typhoon approaches Manila, and "The Magician Murder," about the murder of a stage magician at a cockfight.

Whitfield's output was not as strong as the editor and the writer of the introductory essay seem to think, but it had its moments. Diehard fans of the '20s and '30s crime pulps will enjoy Jo Gar's Casebook.… (mer)

A celebrated European conductor has been gunned down at the Hollywood Bowl. Why and by whom? Well, there's no clear motive and everyone's a suspect in Death in a Bowl, Raoul Whitfield's answer to his buddy Hammett's masterpiece The Maltese Falcon. It's slightly better than Whitfield's previous novel Green Ice, but my enthusiasm was soon dampened by his reliance on the same weary clichés that had always relegated his work to second-rate status: "She sipped her cocktail with narrowed eyes upon the liquid in the long stemmed glass"; "Frey narrowed his eyes; lines creased his forehead"; "Then he narrowed his eyes on the detective's lean face." Whitfield is said to have written very quickly, and I don't doubt it; obviously he had no interest in editing. But while his first book was a straightforward, boneheaded action piece, this one actually conjures some suspense and is pervaded by an agreeably murky, mysterious atmosphere. Private eye Ben Jardinn--an off-brand incarnation of Sam Spade--is not an especially distinctive character, but on the whole this book works. (Only just, but it works.)

If it seems like I'm being hard on Whitfield, bear in mind that Dashiell Hammett had many imitators and none of them came close to duplicating his genius. The main problem here is that the author seems not to have noticed--or cared--when gesture and affectation got in the way of pacing. Whitfield was a pretty decent short story writer (see "Mistral," his finest moment, or some of the Jo Gar stories like "The Magician Murder" and "Signals of Storm"), and that's probably where you should start.… (mer)

Raoul Whitfield was a friend of Dashiell Hammett and a prolific writer for Black Mask. Under the pseudonym "Ramon Decolta" he authored a series of tales about a stoic Manila detective named Jo Gar, and today those stories are Whitfield's primary claim to fame. Green Ice demonstrates why he is more highly regarded as a short story writer than as a novelist: skimpy characterization, lots of violent action, exceedingly awkward prose even by genre standards. Whitfield made up his own lumpy street slang and used it so often that it's painfully obvious he was fishing for critical praise. People are "humans," cigarettes are "pills"; humans are constantly lighting pills and narrowing their eyes (also a habit of Jo Gar, Whitfield's Filipino shamus) to indicate how tough they are. This sort of thing is acceptable in a short story, but no one--least of all Whitfield--can reasonably sustain it for more than two hundred pages. As a novel, Green Ice rates two stars out of five. As a work of hardboiled crime fiction, I give it three stars for pure absurd momentum. Better than Carroll John Daly, but nowhere near as good as Hammett or Chandler or John K. Butler.… (mer)

Raoul Whitfield was one of the pioneering figures of hardboiled fiction and wrote as many as ninety stories in the famed Black Mask magazine. He was a contemporary of Hammett, Chandler, and Carroll John Daly, and a drinking buddy of Hammett’s. Green Ice was Whitefield’s first published novel and is in actuality a set of five shorter stories that were originally published in Black Mask. If you are looking for real, hardboiled stories without pretense and just plain action, action, action, this is it. Mal Ourney served two years in Sing Sing, taking a manslaughter rap for a gal he had been dating and, while there, word gets out he is has it out for the big guys, the crime breeders, who control all the action on the streets. Violence is everywhere as he steps out of the Big House and it all looks like it is going to come back down on Ourney just for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Hammett himself described Green Ice as 280 pages of naked action and tough, staccato prose. It may not be as cleverly plotted as some other hardboiled novels – these were originally short stories- but it literally breathes that tough, dark, hardboiled atmosphere.… (mer)